Love it or loathe it, ragwort is winning 

White, lacy cow parsley frothing along the roadside is a familiar sight during the British summer. But 2024 is the first year I can remember when it’s been superseded by the retina-scorching yellow of ragwort.

Whether you consider common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) the ‘yellow peril’ or a precious wildflower crucial to biodiversity depends on whether you’re in the horse owner/farmer camp or a conservationist. ‘It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,’ I keep hearing from farmers and fellow horse-owners. For the first time I’ve had to pull it up from our small acreage; enough to fill a feed sack. In Appleshaw in Hampshire, villagers organised a community ragwort pull, getting an entire trailer’s worth in just over an hour.

Ragwort is feared by riders because it contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which when ingested by horses can cause liver failure and death. Children learn in Pony Club that the plant can be fatal, so you must pull and spray as soon as it appears.